Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I rise with hope that my colleagues will not waive the Budget Act point of order on this bill and to speak against…”

“I rise with hope that my colleagues will not waive the Budget Act point of order on this bill and to speak against passage of the legislation. Sometimes one has to talk about process when dealing with something as important and as large as the bill before us. A fair process would have allowed input from both Republicans and Democrats, and would have written the bill in committee rather than trying to write the bill on the Senate floor. I am still concerned about a $1 trillion expenditure. When we have an 800-page bill, we are spending about $1 billion per page. Yet I don't believe we have a consensus about the right way to be spending $1 trillion; $1 billion per page in this bill. The important thing we must do for the future is to look at all of the expenditures we are making. It is important for us to look at the trillion dollars we spent on stimulation last year which did nothing to help the economy. Now we have another trillion dollars coming down the pike to shore up financial institutions. We have $1 trillion in spending before us. We already have a $10.6 trillion debt. It is time to step back and say: a trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there, we are talking about real money. The great Everett Dirksen talked about the 'real money' of a billion dollars, and now we are at a trillion. It is time to pause and say to the American people: We are going to look at what needs to be done before we spend another dollar, much less $1 trillion.”